


And I Saw Blue Skies (In Your Eyes)

by Hideous_Sun_Demon



Category: Designated Survivor (TV)
Genre: Alex’s death, Angst, F/M, Romance, Soulmate AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-21 12:49:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14285274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hideous_Sun_Demon/pseuds/Hideous_Sun_Demon
Summary: With a brush of the fingertips, Tom’s world transforms.(Or, the Soulmate AU nobody asked for.)





	And I Saw Blue Skies (In Your Eyes)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fibi94](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fibi94/gifts).



> Every fandom needs at least one cheesy-ass soulmate fic, so I’ve taken it upon myself to give it to you. 
> 
> This is an AU where you don’t see in colour until you make skin-on-skin contact with your soulmate.

Red, orange, yellow. Tom traces the colour wheel with a careful, reverent finger, nestled in his mother’s lap with his father’s hefty book balanced on his knees. Now he travels around to the greens, the blues, the purples, and then back again to red. It’s all a messy blur of greys to him, the labels the only indication as to which shade is which. It’s boring. Tom much prefers to learn the colours from his mum, almost see them as she paints watercolours with her words. She likes to hold him up to the mirror and point out all his different colours. “Blonde,” she’ll murmur as she ruffles his hair, “just like mine.” She can pick out the blue of his eyes, the pink of his lips, the orange of his favourite shirt.

“What about my skin?” Tom had asked once.

“Peaches and cream,” she’d answered, and pressed a kiss to his cheek. Tom hasn’t seen peaches-and-cream in any colour wheel before, but he figures his mum knows more than any boring old books.

Tom is getting really good at picking out all the colours around him, even if he can’t see them. He knows that grass is green- except in the really hot summers when it goes all pale and crunchy- and he knows that Hydro, their new kitten, is orange.

(“Ginger,” his dad corrects him every time.”)

Best of all, Tom knows blue- it’s his mum’s favourite, after all. Blue oceans, blue candy, blue eyes, blue skies, as far as the eye can see.

“It was the first thing I saw,” she whispers in Tom’s ear now, as his finger hovers over the wedge labelled ‘blue.’ She always tells this story whenever they look at the this book, or whenever Tom asks for it- and he asks a lot. “We Touched in Trafalgar Square, in the middle of one of the busiest crowds I’ve ever been in, and I didn’t even realise what had happened until all the colours flooded in. I remember it was so bright! And the sky, the big, blue sky- my god, it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.”

“Until you saw me,” a voice interrupts from the doorway, and Tom looks up to see his father. He’s far more shadow than Tom’s mum, dark clothes, dark hair, dark eyes.

“Yes,” his mum laughs, chest rumbling like a purring engine against Tom’s back, “until I saw you.”

“I was so scared I’d lose you in the crowd,” his dad chuckles. “But when I turned around, there you were, frozen in place just like I was.”

“I must have looked like a right loon, gaping the way I was.”

His dad grins, all teeth, white and dazzling. “You absolutely did,” he says tenderly, and Tom’s mum snorts in laugher. “And I loved you for it.”

Tom loves hearing about how his parents Touched- it’s a real life love story, just like the ones in the story books mum reads to him before bed. Ones about the prince who travels across vast mountains and sweeping forests, shaking the hand of all the maidens in the land until he found his soulmate, the one who would open his eyes to all the colours of the world. Except this is way better, because it’s true! 

“Oh, Tommy,” his mum murmurs, burying her nose in Tom’s hair as he tips his head back to peer up at her. “Oh, sweetheart, I can’t wait until you get to see all of this for yourself. Words can’t even begin to describe it. It’s...” she sucks in a breath. “It’s...it’s like nothing else in the world.”

Like nothing else in the world. The world, Tom knows, is a massive place, with lots of exciting things just waiting to be discovered by him. He’d used to pout a little, after learning that, yes, he’ll only be able to see colours after the Touch, and, no, people usually meet their soulmates when they’re much older- he’s already plenty old enough at six, and waiting until he’s his parents’ age would mean waiting forever. 

“But,” his mum had said, “waiting for the Touch makes it extra special, you see? You and your soulmate get to explore the world together.” And, yeah, he thinks that sounds like something worth waiting for.

Tom leans back in his mother’s arms, and tries to imagine blue skies.

-

In the way it seems to go for most people, Tom meets his soulmate when he least expects it.

It’s a warm May day, the air holding the promise of an even hotter summer to come. Tom chooses to enjoy it rather than stay cooped up in his office- or rather, cooped up with Billy. Tom loves him, truly, but sometimes that guy is...difficult to be friends with. His latest micro-managing stunt involves hounding Tom to come with him to one of those ‘Grey-Parties’ he’s always going on about. Places where people from all over meet up, on the off-chance that they’ll find their soulmate in the throng. Billy insists that they’re classy affairs- Tom privately finds them a little obscene. Maybe he’s old fashioned, but he’s held onto the fantasy of bumping into his soulmate out of nowhere, a chance meeting. Tom still hasn’t grown out of fairytales, apparently.

Besides, they’re neck deep in work- setting up an architecture firm isn’t a part time gig, after all- and they don’t have the time to go gallivanting around at parties, no matter how Untouched they are. So, Tom goes to eat lunch in the park, the same place he always heads to when escaping Billy‘s insanity.

Tom gravitates towards his favourite bench, tracing the familiar path he’s walked on so many similar days before this- Tom is a creature of habit, after all. Though, his routine is apparently due for a disruption, as he notices with a slight frown that his bench is currently being occupied by someone else. He hovers for a second, struck by how absorbed this woman seems to be in her phone, before speaking up anyway.

“Do you mind if I join you?” Asking is the polite thing to do- and far better than giving up the best bench in the whole park. The woman looks up at him with a start that gives way to a smile when she sees him awkwardly standing there.

“Please, go ahead,” she says, shifting her handbag from the space beside her to her lap, and Tom gives her an answering smile of gratitude as he takes a seat. The woman doesn’t go back to her phone as Tom expects, instead dropping it into her bag with a quiet huff, her lips tightening almost imperceptibly.

Tom Kirkman never forgets a face, and he’s certain he’d remember this one if she’d been around here before. He gives her a shy glance over his glasses before flicking his eyes back to his lunch, not wanting to stare, but almost unable to help it. With the shade of grey cascading over her shoulders, Tom would guess blonde hair, perhaps a light brown. Lighter skin, similar to his own, and, Tom wants to say, blue eyes. Not for the first time, he curses the universe for not throwing him into the path of his soulmate yet, for forcing him to fill in the world around him with only the names of shades, but no way of really understanding what they looked like. 

The only colour on the woman Tom can guess with any certainty is her lipstick- it’s a light pink, the same shade his mother used to wear. She’d apply it every day- before she got sick, anyway- with studious attention. Tom had seen the name of the colour when he was packing away all her old makeup, put into boxes along with everything else she’d owned, once upon a time. Tom will never forget that shade for as long as he lives.

He’d always thought it made his mother look younger, more relaxed- “smilier,” as six year old him had put it- but right now the woman just looks forlorn as she stares out at the towering trees surrounding them. She looks, Tom decides, like she could do with a distraction.

“Do you come here often?” Tom asks off-handedly, winces before the words even finish leaving his mouth. Great, now he’s the guy who approaches women with pick up lines scraped from the bottom of the barrel. He’s of half the mind to apologise and abandon his bench, but instead of recoiling, the woman simply shakes her head as if snapped abruptly out of her thoughts, seemingly open to conversation.

“No, first time. I’ve just started working around here, and I’ve been told this is the place to go if you want to wind down and clear your head, so, here I am.” Tom doesn’t think she looks very relaxed.

“Well you’ve picked a good place for it.” Tom leans back, lets his gaze soar up to the clear- blue, his mind automatically supplies- sky above, relaxes as the warm rays of sun massage into his face. “This is the best place to sit in the entire park. Just the right amount of sun, with a little shade from the trees, a great view... It’s my favourite place to sit.”

The woman shifts to face him more fully, smiling. It’s a genuine smile, not one of those polite ones people plaster on when trapped in uncomfortable conversations with strangers, and Tom counts that as a win. “I’ll remember that for the next time,” she says. “I have a feeling I’m going to need to de-stress an awful lot.”

“Is that so?” Tom gives her a once over- and ah, of course. “I’m not surprised. You lawyers can get pretty tightly wound.”

Her mouth formed a little ‘o’ of surprise. “How did you know I’m a lawyer?”

Tom peers at her through his glasses in an act of great concentration. “Well, considering the amount of legal firms around here, the fact that you seem ready to kill whoever you’re talking to on the phone, and that you look both intelligent and utterly terrifying, I’d say lawyer is a pretty easy guess.”

She snorts. “Well played, Sherlock.” She sneaks a surreptitious glance at her bag where her phone is held, the smile dropping off her face. She sighs again. “Except for one thing. This,” she nods at her bag and the phone within, “isn’t work trouble, it’s....boyfriend trouble.”

“Oh. Right.” Tom glares down the wave of disappointment rising up inside. Obviously this woman, this well-put-together, charming, beautiful woman, has already found her soulmate. It’s not a certainty, of course- this is the 21st century, plenty of people date outside their soulmate these days- but Tom knows there’s no way the universe would ever let him be that lucky.

He drops his eyes back to his sandwich, but he can feel the woman’s gaze remain on him. “Sorry,” she laughs, and he glances back up uncertainly. “Here I am unloading about my personal life, and we’re complete strangers. Here, I’m Alex.” She proffers a delicate hand, and Tom narrows his eyes imperceptibly. It’s just a gesture, he knows. Just another part of polite society, to shake hands with everyone you meet, on the off chance that they’re your one. Perhaps she hasn’t grown out of the habit. No sense getting his hopes up.

“Tom,” he returns, reaches out to take her hand. Their fingers meet.

Tom had expected to feel something.

He isn’t sure why. Nobody had ever mentioned anything about a feeling. But it seemed to Tom that something would have to happen- his body would recognise the importance of this meeting. A jolt, a, tingle, anything. But there isn’t anything of the sort. In one breath, he can see an endless grayscale around him, and on the exhale, he can see....everything.

It’s hard to breath, hard to speak, even. Tom is grateful- he doesn’t want his first words after he’s Touched to be “holy shit,” but that’s the only thing running through his mind. The world is an explosion around him, a whirl of blues and greens and reds and yellows and purples and oranges and-

Everything. Now, finally, Tom understands everything.

Alex is the first to recover, babbling out a litany of “Oh my god”’s under her breath, like some holy prayer. They’re still holding hands. Tom isn’t sure he can ever let go, too afraid that all the beauty will disappear if he does.

Finally his throat unsticks. “I thought,” he squawks, motioning to her bag, “You said- I-I thought- you and your boyfriend-“

“No,” Alex exclaims, following it up with a near hysterical laugh. “No. No. No, no no. He’s not- we’re- it’s complicated.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Tom breathes. They can worry about all of that later. Right here, right now, they don’t need to worry about a damn thing.

Tom’s mother had always talked about falling in love with the vast blue skies, the first thing she’d seen. But in this moment, the only blue Tom cares about is in Alex’s eyes. Blue, he decides, is the most beautiful colour in the world.

-

Days later, almost as an afterthought, Tom calls his brother.

Getting in contact with Trey is a dice roll if there ever was one, and Tom honestly doesn’t know what he expected as the the phone futilely rings out once, twice, three times- 

“Tom! Hey, how are you?”

Tom startles at the sound of Trey’s voice. It’s been, he realises distantly, nearly nine months since he’s last spoken to his brother. The thought leaves behind a trace of regret, but it’s a faint one- Trey has made the nature of their relationship clear enough, and Tom is long past feeling guilty for that. Still, no matter how distant they might be, meeting his soulmate is the most important event in his life, and he feels obligated to share the news with Trey himself.

“Er, Tom? You there, big brother?”

“Hey, yeah, Trey,” Tom scrambles. “Sorry, I, uh...” he huffs out a breath. “Honestly, a part of me wasn’t really expecting you to pick up.”

“..Yeah, I guess I deserve that,” Trey replies. Is that remorse in his tone, or is Tom just imagining it? Trey continues. “But you’ve caught me now. So what’s the occasion, man? You seem distracted.”

“That’s a word for it,” Tom chuckles. There’s a shuffling on the other end of the line, as if Trey is switching ears to hear him better.

“Everything okay?” There’s a gravity to Trey’s tone now, a heaviness that takes Tom a few seconds to identify as worry. It’s not often that his little brother takes that tone with him- usually it’s the other way around.

“Yeah, everything’s fine. More than fine, actually.” Tom’s eyes flutter closed. When he opens them again it’s still a thrill, the bombardment of colours all around. “I....I found her, Trey. I found my soulmate.”

“Wow, Tom, that’s- I mean...wow,” Trey’s voice comes through after a moment, a jumble of fragmented exclamations. Tom can’t stop smiling, wonders if his brother can hear it in his voice. Wonders if Trey realises this is the happiest Tom’s ever been.

“Her name is Alex,” he says, words quiet, reverent. “She’s 28, she’s an attorney, and she...she’s...” Beautiful, his mind supplies. The most amazing person he’s ever met. Indescribable.

“She’s perfect,” he finishes.

There’s a pregnant pause, Tom waiting with bated breath for Trey to break the stretching silence. Finally, he ekes out a weak, “That’s...that’s great, Tom. Really great,” and Tom deflates a little. He’d expected...he honestly didn’t really know what he’d expected, but he’d hoped for at least a little enthusiasm.

“Well, anyway,” Tom tries again, “I was thinking you could come over some time, meet her?”

“Introducing her to the family already? You move fast, Tom,” Trey jokes. It’s half hearted, but Tom laughs anyway, desperate for anything at this point. “And, yeah, I’d love to meet her. She sounds amazing, seriously.”

More silence. Tom wonders when he’d forgotten how to speak to his own brother. Or maybe it’s Trey that’s forgotten. Trey clears his throat awkwardly. “I’m...I’m happy for you, big brother.” Tom feels his face twist into a grimace. Trey Kirkman is many things, but a good liar isn’t one of them.

“No, you’re not,” Tom sighs. He almost wants to laugh- this is so typical Trey. The happiest moment of Tom’s life, and he can’t even find it in himself to offer some genuine support. “What is this, Trey, is this jealousy?”

“Tom-“

“Just because you’re still alone doesn’t mean you have to take it out on my happiness, Trey.” It’s a bit harsh, but Tom is too done with his brother’s bullshit to care.

“Are you kidding me?” Trey snaps back. “This hasn’t got anything to do with me. I’m worried about you!”

Tom rolls his eyes. “What-? Why would you be worried about me?”

The sound of Trey sighing whistles long and tinny down the line. “You know why I’m no looking for my soulmate, Tom? Why I’ve never looked? Because that shit is dangerous. It’s not healthy.”

Tom takes a steadying breath through his nose, willing himself to not just hang up the phone then and there. He can’t imagine what he has with Alex being anything other than perfect. “What’s that supposed to mean? We’re happy. I’m happy.”

“For now. But how long is that happiness gonna last? Everything probably seems amazing right now- the Touch, right? Seeing the colours? I bet it’s the most incredible feeling in the world. But when one of you dies-“

“Trey-“

“When one of you dies,” he repeats himself, more urgently this time, “then all of that goes away. Back to grey again. You’re never able to move on, never able to forget what you’ve lost. It’s a curse. It’ll destroy you.”

“No, it won’t,” Tom snaps, shaking his head, lips thin and trembling at even the thought of losing Alex.

“It destroyed Mum,” Trey murmurs, so quiet Tom almost doesn’t catch the words, but when he does they send a fissure of rage through him. “You saw what happened to her after Dad died. She just gave up. That killed her quicker than the cancer ever could-“

“Don’t,” Tom bites out, “try and talk about mum. You have no idea what happened to her- you weren’t there!”

Trey doesn’t bother trying to defend himself. All he says, after a few seconds of ringing silence, is, “just...be careful, Tom.”

“Goodbye, Trey.”

It feels like this is how all their conversations end, bitter with the taste of defeat in a battle Tom didn’t even want to be having. Tom doesn’t know what he’d expected, or why he’d thought calling Trey was a good idea, but he knows he won’t be making the same mistake again.

He doesn’t need his brother. Not now that he has Alex.

-

Tom watches the Capitol go up in flames, and the image is seared into his brain. It’s a scream of flames, bright and burning against the night sky, vicious whites and oranges and yellows giving way to the acrid black of smoke, hanging over Washington like some sinister cloud, some omen. It’s the first time that Tom has ever wished to have not received the Touch, if only to not see the destruction in such vivid, terrible clarity.

The next few hours are a blur, speeding from the safe house to the White House, his tattered thread of his voice as he is sworn in, the glaring lights of PEDC. He feels like a man drowning, with the same sentence circling his mind like a shark, jaws gaping and teeth flashing.

Sir, you are now the President of the United States.

The only constant is Alex’s fingers locked with his- even after he’s whisked away from her into the depths of the White House, he can still feel the warm press of her hand against his skin. It’s this- that memory of her touch, as vivid as the first moment they made contact all those years ago- that gets him through, keeps him breathing until they’re finally alone again in the Residency.

He stands ramrod stiff in the Presidential bedroom suite- no, their bedroom, he has to remind himself now. The reality of what is happening is still lapping gently at the edges of his mind, not quite sinking in, even after a night spent preventing plunging his country into war. Alex comes up behind him, lays a steadying hand on his shoulder, and that’s enough to make him come apart. He turns and lays his head on her shoulder, not speaking, not crying, just letting the tremors he’s been holding back all night roll through him as she holds him steady. Even without the Touch, the colours, it’s moments like these where Tom knows that Alex is his soulmate, forever and always. They don’t need words, they just need each other.

Tom is far too wired to sleep- he feels like he’ll never sleep again- but after hours of tossing and turning and frantic whispers of reassurance, Alex manages to fall into a fitful rest. Tom lies beside her, watching the rise and fall of their intertwined fingers where they’re resting on her chest. There’s a shaft of tangerine light slanting in from a crack in the curtains, heralding the start of a new day. It catches in the flyaway strands of Alex’s hair floating across the pillow, draws spidery shadows cast by fluttering eyelashes across her rosy cheeks. In all the years since they’ve met, one of Tom’s favourite sights has been Alex in the sunlight. But all he feels seeing it now is a deep hollowness in his chest.

Tom thinks back to the Capitol bombing, the flash and rumble he can still see burning behind his eyelids. How many people, in that one moment, had their colours washed away, sniffed out like candles? The thought sits heavy in his stomach, like a stone. So many people grieving, so many people dead- so many, but not him. 

Why not him?

Tom should be feeling grateful, but he can’t shake the bitter unfairness of it all. Out of all the people that should have been at the Capitol, there’s no way that Tom is the one that was supposed to survive. There are- were- countless people who were surely more deserving than Tom. More than that, the country itself deserves more, far more, than what he can give them. But at the same time, all Tom really cares about, the one person who deserves the world and more, is lying beside him. So, in that way, Tom finds it in himself to be thankful. Not for himself, but for Alex, who isn’t one of those left at home, stranded without colour, without her other half. At least she is able to sleep- Tom knows the others aren’t so lucky.

The stretch of morning sunlight is getting longer, and Tom knows that soon he’ll have to get up and face the world as the President. He doesn’t want to, want to carve up this piece of the world with just himself and Alex and stay in it forever. The coward in him wants to hide away. But the better part of him, the part of him that Alex helped foster, knows that, for better or worse, this is his fight now.

And, looking over at Alex’s sleeping form, Tom knows he won’t have to fight it alone.

-

Tom walks through the hospital, and the tiled floors feel like clouds beneath his feet. Most of the time, this job feels like climbing a mountain that keeps getting steeper and steeper, with the footholds slipping out from under him, but today- finally- there have been nothing but victories. Baby Grace is on the road to recovery with a content mother, and the 20 religious extremists are being evacuated at that very moment. A tick from religious groups, the child safety advocates had nothing left to worry about, and, most importantly, everybody is safe.

This, Tom realises, is what a good day feels like.

And now, all he has to do is wait on the news from Alex. Tom probably shouldn’t be feeling as optimistic as he is, but as he stops in front of the window looking in at little Gracie, he can’t shake the feeling that everything is going to turn out alright. Even if they don’t beat Forstell today, they’ll keep fighting.

“Warriors, right?” Alex had said to him, on a night that now felt a lifetime away. They were warriors then, and they’re warriors now.

No matter what news Alex comes back with, though, Tom knows that he’s going to do his very best to make this night all about them. Just for a few hours, they can try to forget the world around them- they won’t be the President and the First Lady, just Tom and Alex. He owes his soulmate that much. Tom remembers the look on Alex’s face when he’d sworn to try and make it up to her.

“Is that a promise?”

“Yes, it’s a promise.”

When all of this began, Tom had promised Alex that becoming the President would never change what they had. Maybe it was a foolish vow to make- Tom had known that it was going to turn everything on its head, and so had Alex. But even if he couldn’t keep that promise, he is at least going to keep this one.

Tom peers down at the baby sleeping soundly in the hospital cot. Grace- it’s a fitting name. With her rosy cheeks and button nose, she looks just like Penny did at her age. Tom knows Alex would have loved to see her, wishes they could have come together. He’ll make sure to tell her all about it when-

grey

Grey. Grey, grey, grey, nothing but grey and black and white and no no nononononono-

Tom can’t breathe.

Tom can’t breathe.

Tom can’t breathe.

Tom falls to his knees. He doesn’t feel anything when he hits the floor. He doesn’t feel anything when the Secret Service swarm around him, hands desperately grasping at his shoulders. He doesn’t feel a damn thing except wordless, endless pain. In the distance, a scream, who the hell is screaming?- no, that’s coming from him. The sound is like something an animal would make, feral and broken. 

Dimly, Tom realises that his phone is ringing. Even if he could, he wouldn’t answer. He doesn’t want to hear the words, because he knows, he knows, he knows.

-

Emily asks Tom what colour roses he would like for the funeral. 

He can’t answer.

**Author's Note:**

> I kind of gave up on this fic halfway through, to be honest, but I hope you guys enjoy it anyway.


End file.
